


kiss me in the d a r k dark tonight

by elainebarrish



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Art dealer AU, F/F, Gallery au, Slow Burn, in the same way that inception is shady lmao, it's also got an edge of slightly shady shit au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10075097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elainebarrish/pseuds/elainebarrish
Summary: You need a summer job, and Professor Miles has the perfect one; receptionist/assistant for his daughter, the beautiful and extremely venerated Mal Miles, Art Dealer and Gallery Owner, and though you don't know it, an extremely underrated thief.





	

**Author's Note:**

> OK SO AU NOTES: basically mal runs a gallery, her main competition is dom, this is literally a complete AU but I also feel like it weirdly works within inception ? mal/dom never happened, inception isn't real etc etc
> 
> ALSO I kind of feel like I should basically make betsy a co-author bc everything this is is thanks to her like she thought of the AU, she developed it, she gave me 90% of the plot points, I just filled in around that. shout out also 2 tori who went ofF abt designers at me when I mentioned it and through that fell in love w marion, ur welcome

It’s Professor Miles that gives you the address, gives you the time, tells you to turn up and say that he sent you, that he’ll ring his daughter ahead of time, and you almost die because of course you know who Mal Miles is, and you never expected that when he said that he had the perfect job in mind for you for the summer it would be for her. She’s a renowned art dealer, known for her longtime competition with Dominic Cobb, a man that is clearly in love with her, and she’s touched more art than you’ve ever even seen. She can predict market trends, can influence market trends, and her and Cobb have been at odds since they first emerged onto the scene. You’ve only ever seen her from afar, at auctions and gallery openings, and a few times when you’ve been on your way to Professor Miles’ office and she’s walked past, and you’ve dimly wondered how she walks in the heels she always wears. She never notices you, never says anything, and you’ve just watched, paying more attention to her than to the art, as she’s leant against the nearest surface, as she spent more time playing on her phone than she did looking at the art. She never buys anything at those auctions, but you know that there have been pieces that have ended up in her gallery anyway, and you think that maybe she just intimidates people into giving them to her (you later learn that actually a lot of those acquisitions are down to Arthur or Eames, and occasionally Saito).

When you open the door to the gallery there’s a tinkle from the bell above the door, and you suddenly remember the other time that you’d wandered into this particular gallery, and you’re struck again by how light the space is, how the morning sunlight slants across the floor, and you’re on time but there’s no one waiting for you, no one around. You call out hello hesitantly, softly, and no one replies, and you just stand for a moment by the front desk, watching the dust motes swirl in the strong sunlight. You move forwards, further into the gallery, and you spend a few long minutes walking from painting to painting, your battered Vans making no noise on the wooden floor, even as you think that you’re probably leaving scuff marks on the surface. You feel out of place, at odds, and you notice a door open in the back, out of the way, and you’re drawn towards it against your own will, your own curiousity getting the better of you like it always has.

You emerge into a much darker space, blinking as your eyes adjust, both to the dark and the disorganised nature of the room, where there’s boxes and packing peanuts scattered over the floor, a few desks that feel abandoned in this room that’s almost as big as the gallery space that’s intended for public eyes. You edge your way around some boxes, look around, and notice another door, this one not open. You call out again, and this time you hear movement, and it’s Mal that opens the door, Mal that steps out into this dark, cluttered room.

“Who are you?” she asks, voice sharp, phone clutched in one hand, and you don’t have time to take her in, don’t have time to look from her Louboutin heels to her eyes, dark in the halflight.

“I, er, I’m Ariadne? Professor Miles sent me?”

“You’re late,” is all she says, and then turns back into the room she came from, and you’re left trying to skirt your way through the large space, left hovering in the doorway, confused as to whether you were supposed to follow her or not.

“Did he tell you what this job entails?” she asks, not looking at you, leaning against her desk while clicking away on her phone, and you’re left shrugging, stepping slightly further into what you realise is her office.

“Not really.” Your voice is quiet and so is this room, but there’s sunlight spilling across the desk here too, sunlight edging her silhouette with gold, turning her stray hairs into glowing threads, the black that she’s wearing seeming to consume the light, the blue of her eyes gleaming. You think about painting her, about trying to recreate the sunbeams across the desk, about trying to recreate her loose curls and the sharp cut of her blazer, the leonine curve of her body, the way that she seems relaxed but you can feel her tension across the room, the way that she waits to spring.

“You’re going to fulfill the role of glorified receptionist slash assistant. At least until I know I can trust you.” She looks up from her phone to look at you critically, and you see her frown at your hands, and you know that that’s probably because of the paint, the paint that always lingers and doesn’t even match the splashes on your jeans. Your nails look even grubbier in comparison to hers, manicured and painted a glossy black, her cuticles perfect. “So for now it’ll be getting coffee and answering the phones and maybe I’ll let you try to sell a painting to someone after a few weeks,” she smiles, a little, but it has an edge, and you learn that everything has an edge with her. “Just… Don’t touch anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” you say, smiling sweetly.

“You can go man the front desk while we wait for Arthur and Eames to get here, and then you’re at their disposal. We have a much larger workload than usual right now, which is why you’re here, and you’re to do whatever they ask of you.”

You nod, and turn, your Vans squeaking on the immaculate floor, and you think you hear her sigh in response, and you half expect her to call you back but she doesn’t, and you take a seat at the front desk, realise that there’s not going to be much in the way of custom, realise that you’re not going to have much to do, and you’re glad for the stack of sticky notes in front of you as you grab a pen and sketch something that maybe looks like her hands curled around her iPhone, sketch something that maybe looks like the sunlight falling across her immaculate desk.

Arthur and Eames don’t turn up for what feels like hours, and you don’t see a single customer in the time that you waited, your only disturbance had been Mal throwing some crumpled Euros at you with a request for coffee from somewhere pretentious and overpriced (she pays for yours too, and you have to admit that it is better than Starbucks, even if you do think she’s a snob). You trust Arthur from the beginning; he smiles and gives you the tour, finally shows you where the bathroom is (you’d been too scared to ask Mal, too anxious to go wandering off by yourself), and he tells you that you’ll basically just be hanging around to fetch stuff for them. Eames, however, is too slick, too charming, in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on (later you learn that that’s his skill, his talent, and you think him and Mal could charm their way out of prison if they tried hard enough). 

The two of them (mostly) welcome you into the fold, but for all of the phone calls you take, all of the coffee you fetch, you don’t learn very much at all about what being an art dealer actually entails. You walk in on surprisingly many whispered conversations in the back room, get Mal’s office door closed on you more times than you can count, and you’re so curious, you want to know what they’re whispering about with a sharp intensity, the kind of curiosity that will get you fired. You have to wait, wait for them to trust you, wait for Mal to do anything more than gaze at your hands in disdain, wait for her to notice more things about you than your scruffy jeans and your paint-streaked shoes. 

Then Mal has to go to an unspecified location to meet someone called Saito, and everything for you remains the same but you miss her presence, miss when Eames makes her almost laugh, that smirk widening into a smile, miss her dark suits and her darker nail varnish, miss her crystal clear eyes and her soft curls. Her leaving makes you realise that while you don’t know anything about her you do know that she is gorgeous, the kind of gorgeous that people write sonnets about, and you’ve drawn her at least two hundred times.

Suddenly, she’s calling you at 3am, her voice low and her tone panicked like you’ve never heard before, and you’re tumbling out of bed, falling into your jeans, almost forgetting your keys, and you’re running to the gallery because you don’t understand what’s happening, don’t understand why she sounds like that. You’re worried about Arthur and Eames even though you know that they’re here somewhere, that they didn’t go with her, because there’s no way she’d call you if either of them could possibly be available.

“Mal, what is going on?” You ask as you let yourself into the gallery, run through the main space, barrelling through doors into her office, your breath panting harshly in your ears, muffling her response.

“I thought I told you never to ask questions,” she snaps, as you wake her computer back up and then you follow her instructions, emailing someone with a nonsense email address a file that has a nonsense name.

“Are Arthur and Eames okay? Why did you ask me?”

“Yes, they’re fine,” she sighed, voice softer than it had been before. “They’re doing something else for me, and are currently unavailable.” There’s a long moment as you breathe a sigh of relief and collapse into her desk chair, still working overtime to pull air into your lungs, and you think that if you’re going to continue working for her you might want to pick up jogging.

“Thank you,” she says, almost so quietly you think you might have imagined it, and then there’s a click and you’re left sitting in her office in the dark at 3:20am, your shins burning and your heartbeat finally slowing down, and you wonder if she knows what her office looks like this late, if she knows about the orange glow that comes from the streetlight right outside one of the huge windows, if she knows that the back room is pitch black, apart from the yellow square of light from the gallery door. You wonder what the fuck you’re getting into, wonder what the fuck Arthur and Eames are doing right now, and think that surely it can’t be that illegal because Arthur is such a kind, mild-mannered man, but you’ve also seen the rumours, seen them on enough websites that you think there must be some element of truth to it. No one gets a reputation like Mal’s without bending the rules a little, but for now you think that she’s merely bending them, not that she’s actually in a completely different league.

Arthur’s smiling as he walks in the next day, to you trying to recreate the long shadows in the orange light of Mal’s office last night, you trying to recreate one of the views that had stuck in your mind on the silent, surreal walk back to your tiny apartment.

“I hear Mal got you to do something that wasn’t just fetching coffee.” He smiles as you follow the two of them into the backroom, and even Eames looks cheerful this morning, so you suppose that whatever it was that you did worked out for them, that they got whatever it was that they wanted.

“Am I allowed to talk about it?” you ask with a laugh, and they don’t even look sheepish at the clear allusion to the huge amount of whispering that goes on in this gallery, Arthur just shrugs, and you know that that means that Mal has already told them, that the three of them have already discussed what it is exactly you’ll be allowed to know. “I got to sprint here at 3am to send an email, and when I woke up this morning my shins still hurt.”

“I wish I’d seen that,” Eames says with a laugh, and you roll your eyes at him.

“I’m assuming by the way that you guys look cheerful that everything went okay?” You try, cautiously, and you smile when Arthur nods, but he looks guarded. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna ask anything else, I know that Mal will kill you.”

“It’s not just that,” Arthur pauses, shrugs a little. “I don’t want to betray her trust, not even to make you feel like you belong, which I think you do. She just takes time.”

You know the two of them care about Mal more than any of them usually let on, know that they would do anything for her, do regularly do ridiculous things for her, even if they won’t tell you what those things are, and you don’t want to get in the way of that, don’t want to pull them in two different directions.

“Hey, don’t worry, I know she inspires trust and she takes a long time to return it. I’m impatient, but I’m not expecting y’all to do anything you wouldn’t be comfortable with.”

Arthur smiles and Eames rolls his eyes, like he’s not smiling too, and shrugs it off. “Her majesty will be back later on today, so you can find out exactly what she’s prepared to tell you then.”

“I look forward to it,” you say sarcastically, but Eames gives you a look like he knows damn well that you are looking forward to it.

Mal walks in just before you’re due to go home, and she’s holding several shopping bags, which you instinctively go to take off of her but she waves you away, finding a particular one. 

“There’s a gallery opening tonight, in an hour, so you’ve got that much time to put this on and do,” she waves her hands unhelpfully. “Something with your hair.”

“Uh, usually I just wear a nicer shirt for openings?” You try, but she shakes her head, already walking away, and you realise she shouldn’t even know your size, that she has no idea what you would usually wear for formal events, and you have a vague hope that she’s just invested in a pair of jeans that don’t have paint splattered up and down the legs. You disappear into the bathroom with a large amount of trepidation.

You google the tshirt when you realise the label proclaims Dior, when you think about it and realise that Mal isn’t going to buy you any old “we should all be feminists” tee, and you almost immediately take it back off when you find out it’s $700, and you shrug into everything else as quickly as you can without checking the labels, not wanting to know how much money Mal has to throw around on an outfit that you could have created from your pre existing wardrobe. Blazer, tshirt, slacks and brogues is definitely the lesser of all of the evils you were expecting, much better than the dress you were dreading, and you don’t feel particularly uncomfortable as you exit the bathroom, still confused as to how she already knew your size.

“Who knew a person existed underneath all of those paint splatters,” Eames teases as you walk into the back room, and you swear at him.

“This whole time I was just paint masquerading as a girl,” you laugh, and then frown. “Did you know that this shirt costs $700?” 

“It’s from Dior’s Spring/Summer collection, right?” Arthur asks, and Eames laughs.

“That’s what Google told me, yeah. This is insane, this tshirt costs more than my rent.” They both just smile at your outrage, and you sigh. “I bet you can buy exactly the same shirt off of amazon for, like, $15.”

“You could, but would it be as well made, would the cut be the same? Would they have used cheaper fabrics, would someone have premiered it during their debut collection as the first woman to be the artistic director of one of the biggest fashion houses in Paris?” You didn’t hear Mal open her door, and you turn around to her wearing a variation on her usual daytime outfits, but this time with leather trousers, and you think you swallow your tongue before she’s even finished walking towards you, before she’s finished speaking.

“What I, uh, meant to say was thank you.” You manage, swallowing hard, and she smirks at you.

“That’s what I thought. Are we all ready to go?” The three of you nod and she leads the way out, leads the way across the cobbles to Eames’s car, leaves you and Arthur to get into the back, and when you make eye contact with him he smiles, eyebrows raised.

The gallery is one of those dimly lit affairs, with walls jutting out into the middle of the space, making it a veritable maze, and it’s not really meant for this kind of event, is clearly arranged with the art being the first thing in mind, and you’re glad for that, glad for the confusion as you weave around the walls, as you admire the new collection. You have a glass of champagne in hand, but you don’t drink it, part of you waiting for Mal’s demand to make itself known, for her to reveal why exactly you’re here. You slink around in the half-dark, looking more at the people than you are at the art, which is why you catch Arthur as he slides something out of someone’s pocket and slides it into his own, and when he looks up he only looks faintly alarmed, manages to casually saunter over to where you’re pretending to look studiously at a painting that you think you hate.

You keep your voice low, and the acerbic edge you were expecting to be there doesn’t quite make it. “Are all of the secrets really just because you’re into petty thievery?”

“This wasn’t what we came here for today,” he starts uncomfortably. “Mal’s closing a deal, she thought it would be easier if her and Eames were to do it in person.”

You can’t help how you laugh at that, at the idea of this poor person being attacked by their full charm offensives at the same time. “They have no chance, then. But why am I here, and why are you apparently very nimble-fingered?”

“Mal just wanted to have backup, she’s going to start introducing you to elements slowly, let you see what it actually is that we do. And the stealing, that’s uh,” he pauses. “Eames and I sometimes see things that we think Mal would like, and we steal them, if we can. It’s a game, it’s mostly harmless, and Mal always laughs, she always keeps the things we steal for her.”

“What if you get caught?” You ask quietly, frowning, and he shrugs, quickly. 

“It hasn’t happened to me yet. It happens to Eames occasionally, but he just charms his way out of it. Mal’s reputation is too reputable for any of us to truly be believed to have stolen something petty, like a ring or a note or a necklace, not even by those who know about some of our… shadier ventures.” 

“So the internet was right about those?”

“There are always rumours,” he shrugs. “And some of those rumours are probably based partially in truth.”

You laugh, shaking your head, barely believing that you’re not running, barely believing that this is your job now. You drink your champagne, and Arthur disappears back to schmoozing, and when he comes and leads you outside you haven’t spoken to anyone but you have decided that there were only five paintings worth the canvas they were on in that collection.

“So what was the real reason we were there?” You ask, and the silence somehow intensifies as Eames keeps driving and Arthur waits for Mal to say something, and you look through the seats to see her still on her phone in the front seat, but she sighs and looks around, makes eye contact with you in the quiet dark, and you notice the necklace glittering around her neck, the necklace that you know she wasn’t wearing when you all left, and you realise that it’s not just Arthur and Eames who are keen on petty thievery. 

“Taking you there was the reward, was the step further, the explanations come later, once you prove yourself.” Her face is mostly in shadow, the street lights flashing past only exacerbating the issue, but you think there’s a smirk, and you feel like you’re being dared, you always feel like you’re being dared, to push her, to get yourself thrown out of the car, probably while it’s still moving, and you choose your next words carefully.

“Look, I googled you, I know about the rumours, about the things that you maybe did that no one can prove, and I don’t care, but I do care about being left out of the loop while maybe being peripherally involved in something that may or may not get me in trouble. If I am going to go to jail I want to know what for.”

“How long have you been crafting that argument?” she asks, and Eames chuckles, and you smile against your better judgement.

“Well I don’t have much to do while sat at that front desk day after day.” Mal’s laugh is low, throaty, and you wish you could see her face properly, see what she really looks like when it’s you that makes her smile, wish that you could see whether her eyes are reluctantly fond, whether she’d smile at you in that same exasperated but pleased way that she does at Eames.

“I’m sorry, Ariadne, but it’ll be soon, I promise.” Her voice is soft and she honestly looks sorry as she turns to face the front once again, and you sigh.

“Well at least I tried.” You smile at the window when the three of them chuckle, and you think that maybe you will get to a point where you belong with these people, you allow yourself to indulge in hope for a moment, for a moment you think about what it would be like to be included, to be one of the team, to be needed, and you can’t stop the way your smile widens at the thought.

There are more gallery openings, more outfits provided to you by Mal, and some of them are dresses, and none of them appear to match or even work as a counterpoint to what she wears, she of the leather trousers and the Louboutins and the blazers, she of the occasional dress, the occasional cape. You’ve never seen her wear a colour lighter than burgundy, never seen her wear anything that could count as casual, never seen her wear something that doesn’t make her look absolutely amazing. She brings you along to some auctions too, let’s you stand next to her in the background while she texts or whatever the fuck it is that she does on her phone constantly, and you witness more small thefts. A necklace here, a ring there, someone’s least used credit card, and Mal laughs when she receives every one, smiles wider than you’d realised she could and kisses them on the cheek, and they grin back, and you feel even more like an outsider than you’d realised you could. You don’t consciously notice when the thought starts starts swirling around, don’t consciously think about why you’re watching youtube videos that teach you how to pickpocket without getting noticed, and you need someone to practise on, someone that won’t mind. Somehow that becomes Arthur and Eames, and the first time Arthur notices before you’ve even got your hand anywhere near his pocket, asks if something’s wrong, and you have to back off and try again later.

It’s Eames that you get first, Eames that sees you cheer and laugh, Eames that gets to watch you throw his wallet onto the table with a grin, and him and Arthur both give you a look that is measured, appraising, a look that tells you that you’ve surprised them, that you’ve surpassed their expectations. They both return the high fives that you go for, and all three of you laugh as Eames carefully, exaggeratedly, picks up his wallet and slides it back into his pocket.

“Okay, so you can do wallets, but can you do jewellery?” he asks, and you shrug.

“I figured wallets were a good place to start.” You hop up onto the desk, settling in to see if him and Arthur will give you some kind of lesson, to see if they’ll let you hang around in the back room for longer than just your lunch break.

“Hmm, I don’t have any jewellery,” Eames says, and Arthur shrugs.

“I’ll go ask Mal,” you reach out to stop him, because you don’t want her to know, don’t want her to ask, but he’s bounding over to her door before you can, sticking his head around the side, and then Mal’s stood, smirking, next to Eames and Arthur, and you want to bury your face in your hands, don’t miss the laughter on Eames’s face.

“I’m glad I wore a necklace today.” Is all she says, and then Arthur and Eames start to show you, start to try to teach you, and it’s fine until Mal says that you should try, that you should attempt to reach up and undo the clasp without her being able to feel it, that they’d teach you coverups and ways to make it flow into conversation, ways to steal under the guise of something else, once you’d learnt to have nimble fingers, once you’d learnt to have a lighter touch. You figure that not touching her at all is a good place to start, and you’re stood close enough to her that you worry she can hear your accelerated heartbeat, that she can see the pale flush on your cheeks.

“Let me show you,” she says, eventually, after you’ve tried and failed several times, after she’s stopped you before you’ve even started three times in a row. She takes the necklace off, somehow steps even closer to put it around you, fastening it slowly, and you can’t meet her eyes, can’t breathe with her arms around your neck, and when she draws back you manage to look up, and you swear that there's the shadow of a smirk there, something knowing. “It's not about being scared to touch them,” she continues and you feel endlessly called out, like she knows exactly what you're thinking, and the look on her face isn't helping that. “It’s about giving you a reason to do so, and then being agile enough that they don't feel that particular touch, the one that leads you to remove it. Often distractions work,” and here she touches your arm, leans in with a smile, and you don't even feel it because you're flustered, reeling, and then she's leaning back, necklace in hand.

“How did you -?” you start, but you don't bother to finish because you know how, and she looks too smug to not know.

“Use what you have to your advantage. For example, necklaces might not be the best bet for you because you're… somewhat shorter than your marks will probably be.”

You can't help but laugh at that, shaking your head. “Right, so necklaces are out, guess I should keep to pockets.”

She puts the necklace back on and shrugs. “Maybe you'll surprise me, maybe not.” And she turns and disappears back into her office, leaving you with Arthur and Eames who both look as though they're about to start laughing, who look like they’re almost as surprised by what happened as you are.

“Close your mouth before you start to catch flies,” Eames jokes, and Arthur looks at you sympathetically.

“Everyone falls in love with her in some way,” he says, and you splutter, because that's not what it is at all.

“There’s a big difference between thinking she's attractive and being in love,” you shake your head, but you still almost whisper it, scared that her office door isn't shut as firmly as it looks, scared that she may overhear.

“I’ve seen that look aimed at Mal way too many times not to recognise it,” his face is kind and he lowers his voice to match yours, and somehow that just makes you want to bury your face in your hands even more. “Just, be careful? She’s not always all that considerate with people’s hearts.”

“She’s not gonna let me in, anyway.” You mutter bitterly and proceed back into the outer gallery, back into the sunlight and the quiet, where you return to your sketchpad and don't draw her, make a point not to, where you draw necklaces and Eames’s wallet and something that might have been the curve of her neck before you scratched over it, before you covered the page in black.

The first thing you steal is a ring, and you debate keeping it for yourself, as a memento of your first time, as some sort of reminder of who you're potentially becoming, as some kind of symbol of the spiral of your moral compass, but the promise of Mal’s reaction is too much, too tempting, so you find yourself leaning over in the car, dropping it onto her lap. You don't know what the person’s name was, just remember deciding that it was to be him, that he’d shaken enough hands before you and would go on to shake more that by the time he noticed his signet ring was gone you'd be gone too. In that way you can take advantage of being one of many, of being most unremarkable, just small and cute and polite, and you know your face wouldn't have stood out to him, wouldn't stand out to many people in that room.

“Ariadne, this isn't yours,” she smiles as she turns to face you, ring gleaming in her hand, and she slides it onto her thumb, where it mostly fits, and admires it. You’re trying not to hold your breath, barely hoping for a compliment, barely hoping for her to tell you that she's glad she hired you. “You continue to surprise me. I’ll remember that you did this for me, I'll remember this step.”

You know you're grinning, can't help yourself, but you just shrug, pretend like it’s nothing. “Just wanted to get you something, I felt like you'd been receiving presents from everyone but me.”

She laughs at that, her teeth flashing white in the dark of the car, her eyes dark. All four of you tumble into the gallery to change back into your day clothes, and before she disappears into her office she draws you close, kisses you on the cheek, smiles in the harsh florescent lights of this gallery that you were getting used to seeing in the gloom of night, and she whispers a “thank you".

The first time you get given a headset before you head out, you laugh. It’s tiny, smaller than an earplug, and Arthur laughs as you pull a face as you stick it into your ear, and he laughs as he secures the equally tiny microphone onto your sleeve, and he has to tell you not to do the 007 hold your sleeve up to your face move, that you should just pretend to mess with your hair or your collar. Nervous ticks can cover up many things, is what he tells you, and you don’t know about the guns, don’t know that Cobb will be there, don’t know that this is going to be one of the biggest art heists they’ve pulled off in years. There isn’t time for them to try to teach you to get used to the disorientating feeling of hearing the bustle of a gallery opening from three different microphones feeding into your ear, isn’t time to teach you exactly how close the mic has to be to pick up your voice, how loudly you need to speak into it. You know that you usually step up to the plate, that Mal will have planned this and she wants to see if you can listen to them without it showing on your face, but you wish that they’d involve you in the planning for once instead of just throwing you in the deep end.

Cobb’s already there, already holding court, and you notice his ring immediately, then think that that would be too easy; you want his wallet, you want to have to get closer than a handshake, you want to make him feel it, make Mal impressed. You want to walk out of here with his driving licence and his credit cards, and the €100 he probably keeps around just in case. You only want to have to go up to him and be introduced once, and when you trip into him you know that it’s the oldest trick in the book, but you also have his wallet in your pocket and you look innocent enough that he barely questions it, and you just apologise, waggle your champagne glass, and disappear back into the crowd. No one notices. The voices in your ear are concentrating on breaking into the back room, on collecting a painting that Cobb is here to pick up, one that he paid for and they plan to make sure he never gets, even if they won’t be able to reveal that they have it. You wonder how much stolen art is sitting in the back room of Mal’s gallery, how much there is that she’ll have to fence and then buy back off of the black market once it’s widely known that the stolen painting is out of the hands of whoever stole it. You wonder how many of those paintings Cobb has.

“Eames, guards on your right,” Arthur says, and you concentrate on them, but also concentrate on looking like you’re staring intently at a painting, on making small talk with a few nobodies you’ve gotten to know that tag onto all of these things, that think you’re one of them. You have to fight a gasp when you hear the gunshots, when you hear something that sounds like a thud.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Eames says, but Mal is suddenly striding towards you, all while teasing her hair, all while muttering instructions, low but forceful.

“Both of you get out of there right now, I will not have either of you shot.”

“But the painting -” Arthur starts, and she practically hisses.

“I don’t give a shit about the fucking painting, I give a shit about your lives.”

“No, we can’t let Cobb keep this one, Mal, you know that. Just five more minutes.”

“I said no.”

“I’ve got it,” Eames interrupts, and then you hear panting and what you think might be the slapping of the expensive shoes on laminate floor. Mal practically drags you out of there, not even thinking about all of the people that turn to look, all of the people that watch her half throw you into the car, the people who are drawn to her anger and her beauty and the sheer ferociousness in the way that she strides. She drives in a careless way you’ve never seen, taking a fairly circuitous route to the agreed meetup point, and Arthur and Eames jog out from behind a large bin, one of them holding a portfolio case, and for once both of them get in the back. When she goes back to driving she is once again measured, careful, drives the way that you’re used to seeing from Eames, the way that you suppose becomes second nature when you’re trying desperately hard not to stand out, but all three of you are holding your breath, are waiting for her to explode.

“The two of you ignored a direct order from me, and put your lives at risk.” Her voice is quiet but you can hear the barely controlled anger, the worry, the way that she’s having to concentrate so hard not to yell at them just because she was scared that she was going to lose them. You know she loves them but this is a display that you weren’t expecting, and you want to reach out and soothe her white knuckles from where she’s gripping the steering wheel so tight you’re surprised it doesn’t break, want to whisper that they’re safe, they’re okay, nothing’s going to happen to any of you.

“Mal, I’m sorry, but we were so close,” Arthur says, and you hear the apology in his voice, you can feel that even Eames feels pretty fucking contrite about this whole thing.

“Just never put a painting before your lives ever again. No piece of art is worth a human life.”

There’s mumbles of “yes Mal, I’m sorry” and you suddenly remember the wallet in your pocket, the one that isn’t yours, and you laugh, and it’s loud in the silence and you feel Mal’s attention shift to you but you can’t decide whether she’s still angry or if she’s calming down, so you explain yourself before she can speak.

“I stole Cobb’s wallet,” you shrug, laughing a little helplessly, and Mal just blinks out at the road, like she can’t believe it.

“Cobb’s wallet? As in Dominic Cobb?” 

“Yeah the blonde dude with the weird mouth?” Even Mal laughs in answer to that, and Eames punches you on the shoulder in a way you think is older brotherly, and Arthur’s laughing in a kind of relieved way that sounds a little shaky and tired. 

The four of you get out of the car, wander into the gallery, and Arthur finds a bottle of champagne from somewhere, and finds enough clean mugs for you, and you split it between you with a laugh. You hand Mal Cobb’s wallet and she looks through it with a growing smile, a real, honest one, and the last thing you expect her to pull out of it is a picture of herself, taken about twenty years ago, in a dress that’s a light blue that you’d never get to see on her now, her head turned away mid laugh, not looking at whoever took it.

“My father introduced us. I was studying Art History, he was taking Architecture, but somehow he’d garnered approval and interest from my father, who thought he had a good future somewhere, and he thought that we would be a good match, thought we had enough in common that we would be instantly smitten with each other. He was right about Cobb, but I was… already attached to a girl that hadn’t noticed me.” Her voice is quiet with reminiscing, remembering when she was even younger than you are now, and you realise that you’d never thought to ask what degree she’d taken, if she’d taken one, had never really thought of her as someone with a whole fifteen years of life that you’ve yet to experience. Your brain follows that thought with screaming about there being a girl, screaming at the thought that Mal, who you’d just assumed would be straight as hell, was apparently not that.

“There’s someone on this earth that found it possible not to notice you?” You know it’s daring as you say it, but she laughs, a soft laugh that you haven’t really experienced. She’s softer like this, late at night when she’s trying to relax after being scared, after being worried, softer as she remembers, softer as she takes a sip from a chipped mug that bears an almost worn away Star Wars logo.

“That was before I learnt that everyone looks good in black.” She surprises you and so does your laugh, and you shake your head, shrugging.

“I’m sure that made all of the difference. Anyway, it’s been like fifteen years or something, why does he still have a picture of you?”

“Well, from what I’ve heard, he hasn’t dated anyone since I very firmly and clearly told him to stop moping after me, that we could be friends but I didn’t want anything other than that.”

You laugh, shaking your head. “Oh that’s so sad. Bless him. I hope he has another picture of you somewhere, imagine if I’ve taken his only one.” You can barely manage to hold your giggles through speaking, and you can barely control them in the face of her mischievous eyes and wide grin. Her teeth are cute, you think, dimly, somewhere behind the several levels of shock you’ve experienced this evening.

“I think you should keep it, better you than him. Maybe you’ll get the opportunity to gloat about his missing wallet.” Her grin sharpened as you see an idea cross her mind. “I’m going to go buy shoes on his credit cards.”

“Mal all of your shoes look exactly the same.” You laugh as you trail after her to her office, leaning in the doorway as she puts her mug down, stabs the power button and sits down, in her desk chair that’s way more comfortable than any of the other chairs in the office, the one that Eames steals occasionally and gets Arthur to push him across the gallery in.

“You recognise art, you notice the fine differences that make something look completely new, so I know that you see the craftsmanship that goes into each piece.”

“Well I’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada, so that’ll have to do.” You laugh, loud and unrestrained when she glares at you, and you drift closer, still holding your mug, barely daring to take a sip.

Arthur and Eames drift over too, to see what’s going on, and the four of you end up crowded around Mal’s monitor, and you periodically gasp at the prices and Arthur gives advice, and somehow within all of this she buys you your first simple pair of black Louboutin pumps, the highest pair of heels that you will have ever owned, and she completely ignores your loud spluttering, just tells you that Eames will have to teach you how to walk in them.

She makes you wear them next time you’re dragged to a gallery opening, makes you wear a dress, and you feel ridiculous and like you can’t walk but you also feel good like you didn’t know ridiculously expensive heels could make you feel. You feel like you look older, professional, like maybe you’re nearing the kind of put together Mal feels, but then you look over, to where she’s making small talk with someone, to where you can see her slip the bracelet from someone’s wrist, and realise that her air of disinterest is something that you’ll never perfect, something that you don’t really want to. For you this is just dressing up, you’re just playing, for her it’s her armour, it’s who she is, it’s how she feels comfortable, what makes her feel ready to face the world.

She hands you the bracelet you saw her steal when the four of you get back to the gallery with a smile, says that she thinks it’ll look better on you, and you slip it on, don’t even think about where she got it, don’t even think about what it means that you’ve normalised this behaviour as you pass over the phone you slipped out of someone’s pocket, and she doesn’t even go through it, just looks at the wallpaper and thanks you, because she likes to steal but she’s never been interested enough in most people to snoop.

“When you get to work tomorrow Arthur will start to brief you.”

“Brief me?” you laugh. “You mean you’re not just gonna throw me into a situation this time?”

“As a well done for handling the situations you’ve been “thrown” into, you’ll actually be involved.” She’s smiling, just a little, and it distracts you from the dread of having to walk home in these shoes.

“I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow then,” you smile turns more genuine, less excited, and you think she softens in response to it. “Night Mal.”

“Good night Ariadne.” You’re floating the entire walk home, even if your feet are killing you, and you can barely settle down to sleep, can barely stop thinking about Mal, about how she must trust you now, how she must be prepared to let you be part of the team. Every day has been a test and it looks like you’re passing, and if there’s one thing you’ve always liked it’s coming top of your class.

You get to this gallery, the four of you, and you have to blend, have to pretend to mingle until you get the say so, until Arthur’s managed to work his way behind the scenes, has managed to turn off several of the alarms, and you don’t steal anything, you’re too nervous, your hands are shaking, and you keep them firmly in your pockets in the hopes that it’ll stop anyone from noticing. This gallery space is completely different to Mal’s, it’s full of harsh artificial light that glares and bounces off of the portrait frames, harsh light that makes Mal look angry and infinitely more mysterious, and if that isn’t symbolism you don’t know what is. You wander, you look at the paintings, and you barely speak to anyone, because you never do. You nod at some of the other assistants, the ones that end up at these things because their bosses make them come, the ones that have tried to get you to join in on commiserating about how terrible their bosses were and you hadn’t been able to.

Arthur’s murmured voice beckons you through the gallery, and you recall the plans as you saunter through the harsh lighting, your brogues clicking on the hard laminate floor, the black of the tiles bouncing off the light in a way that makes your head spin. You slip through a door, keep to the most important advice that they had given you; always look like you know what you’re doing, always look like you’re supposed to be there. You reach Arthur, you’re joined by Eames, and Mal keeps talking to you through your earpieces. You’re just glad that there’s no lasers, no motion sensor plates on the floor, just a fuckton of cameras that Arthur has hopefully dealt with. You bring up the rear, you keep an eye on behind the three of you, and it’s Eames who takes a guard down with his bare hands, as quietly as he can, just a muffled, sick sounding crunch and then the small amount of noise the guard can make with Eames’s hand over his mouth and nose. 

You’re almost out of there when the alarms start going off, and Arthur yells at you to run, that they don’t need you to help with the actual extraction, but you tell them that you’ll wait, that you’re not leaving them. You don’t think Mal would ever forgive you, and you laugh as you say that, as Eames whips out a film worthy laser thing and cuts out the glass, as he pulls out the painting, removes the frame and rolls it up, tucks it under his jacket, and that’s when you’re aware of the sound of people running towards you, of multiple pairs of heavy boots hitting the concrete floor, and you lead the other two out of there, ignore the actual fucking gunshots that echo behind you. You dodge out of the way of where you know other guards will be, remember the plans as best as you can to get you out of there, to get you out in a way that won’t just lead right into a nest of Police, and by the time you get to the rendezvous point Mal is waiting for you, her face drawn and anxious in a way that you remember from the last time you heard gunshots.

The three of you throw yourselves into the car, let out a breath together, and Eames throws the painting onto the seat between the two of you, and you laugh, grinning, euphoric. You’re glad that the three of you were successful, that you successfully stole a painting, and you laugh again at how ridiculous that sentence sounds in your own head, how ridiculous this all was.

“You agreed to listen to Arthur and I’s instructions,” Eames says, but he’s smiling, and you don’t think he looks angry.

“Had to make sure you guys got out of there, I’m sure you would have been lost without me,” you smile, and you can’t see Mal’s face so you don’t realise that now isn’t the time, that she isn’t laughing.

“If you do that again you’re back on desk duty,” she says, tightly, and you gape at the back of her head for a moment, glad that she can’t see you in the rearview mirror.

“Come on, I was just trying to help! And it’s not like I was wrong, the three of us got out of there fine.”

“You can help better if you’re alive,” she says, sharply. “You’re one of the team now. That means you act like one of the team.”

“Yeah which means I don’t leave the team behind.” Mal’s quiet as she turns the engine off, gets out of the car, and the three of you trail after her into the gallery, the celebratory air gone as Eames throws the painting onto the front desk and you all look at her, wait for her response.

When she turns around her eyes are burning, brutal, and you’re briefly scared as she steps towards you, powerful and tall and vengeful, but then suddenly she lets out a breath, and she just looks tired, just looks like someone who’s been scared and is now relieved. “Being part of the team means that we all care about each other, and you do not almost die while people who care about you can hear your every move.”

You’re vaguely aware of Arthur and Eames melting away, throwing good nights over their shoulders that get ignored, and you’re stood in the middle of Mal’s gallery with Mal towering over you, and she’s telling you that she cares about you, something which she had never found reason to say before, but you think of the bracelet, think of the smiles, and realise she had said it, had let you know in every way she could.

“They weren’t even close,” you mutter, but your heart’s not in it, you’re distracted by her, by the empty space surrounding and muffling you both, distracted by her eyes and the way that her forehead creases between her brows when she frowns, distracted by her hands jammed in her trouser pockets in a way that isn’t familiar to you, like she’s trying to stop herself from her usual gestures, like she’s trying to stop herself from touching you.

“I heard them, so they were more than close enough. I know you care about the art, about beating Cobb, I know that, but the three of you aren’t supposed to risk your lives for these things, you’re supposed to take risks that are carefully calculated.” She sounds tired, stressed, and you want to hug her.

“Well then let’s try out obtaining some legally for a while, huh?” You smile, and she rolls her eyes. “I have an idea, anyway.” You sketch out a vague plan on getting a deal at an auction that’s rolling up soon, an artist you’ve had your eye on, and she looks impressed, says she’ll think about it.

“You continue to surprise me,” is all she says, and you shrug.

“You keep surprising me too. You’re pretty good at keeping your cards close to your chest,” you pause, look at her for a moment. “It’s kinda hard for you to let people in, isn’t it?”

She raises her eyebrow and you think she might teeter towards anger for a moment, but then she just sighs in a way that you’re used to. “People don’t often show that they’re deserving of trust.”

“Still you could just, I don’t know, be a little less frustrating?”

“And you could wear jeans that don’t have paint on them, we all have our failings,” she dares you to respond with her eyes, with the upturn of the side of her mouth, but you just shrug.

“At least I knew that my paint splattered jeans liked me.”

“Who says I like you?” she smiles, laughs a tiny bit, and then waves you away. “Good night Ariadne, I’ll think about your proposition.”

“Night Mal.”

Operation: Go To An Art Gallery and Flirt Your Way to a Good Deal had been agreed by all as a good plan, because between Mal and Eames all of your bases are covered, and when both of them go on the offensive you’ve never seen anyone manage to leave unscathed. Mal laughs when you say this, Eames bows a little, and they both know that it’s true, that they’ve got the sort of confidence that is truly what’s going to pull this off. You bet Arthur €20 they can get the painting for free, and you half expect them to leave the two of you behind. They bring you merely for entertainment reasons, according to Eames, and you’re all relaxed like you haven’t been at one of these things in ages, like you’ve never been able to be when there’s earpieces and microphones involved. You steel yourself before you enter the auction room, take a moment in the doorway to find her, to scan her outfit, to let her extra high heels distract you, let the tilt of her shoulders in the sharpest blazer you’ve ever seen draw your eyes, let her leather trousers and sheer blouse and dark lipstick make your tummy do a weird flip/drop. You do all of this while she’s looking at her phone, frowning, and you smile at the crease between her eyebrows, and it’s this that she looks up to, and you hurry over, your hands jammed in your pockets, your head ducked in a futile attempt to hide your flushed cheeks.

“Have you seen her?” You ask, referring to the mark, and Mal shakes her head. “Have you looked up from your phone?” You tease, and she rolls her eyes.

“There she is,” she nods across the room and you follow her eyes, notice someone who’s wearing something that looks designer, and you roll your eyes.

“Can you tell what designer she’s wearing?” You ask, because it’s something that you’ve noticed her and Eames can do; there are certain designers that they can always recognise, and you like to laugh at their knowledge of something that ridiculously unhelpful.

“It looks like something from the new Prada season,” she wrinkles her nose, and you think it’s adorable. “She’s clashing with the room.”

“This auction house deserves only the best.” You laugh, but you mostly mean it; it looks like a church, with towering ceilings and stone arches and wooden benches spanning the room, dark wood panelling the walls, all it’s missing is some stained glass windows, and instead of those there’s sunlight spilling through enormous skylights, sunlight making dust motes swirl and leaving squares of light on the dark concrete floor. She nods, seriously, and starts making her way over to her, and you hang back, let her talk, let Eames drift over, and when they come back they’re frowning, and the mark is trailing after them.

“This is Ariadne and Arthur,” Mal introduces you, tries to tell you something with her eyes that you don’t understand. 

“I’m Melanie,” she says, and you flirt smoothly through the next half an hour in a way that you know stuns the others, but this is something you can do, something that’s easy. Flirting with girls you don’t really like is just another life skill that you’d picked up somewhere along the way, and most of the time you’re pretty good at it even with girls that you do like, Mal is one of the very few that makes it hard for you to pull out the crooked smile and the playful compliments. You get the deal, get Melanie’s phone number, and then she has to disappear somewhere, and the four of you settle in to whisper through the rest of the auction, leaning against the wood panelling at the back of the room like the well-dressed cool kids in the back of the cafeteria.

You feel Mal’s eyes still on you, feel your cheeks heating up, and you know that she was looking at you before, but when you meet her gaze she looks almost… angry. Or jealous, or frustrated, or something that you don’t understand, something that doesn’t make sense.

“What?” You whisper, leaning next to her, your face turned towards hers, closer than you’d meant to be, and you can see the way her lipstick has collected in the creases of her lips, the way the sparkle from her eyeshadow has ended up on her nose somehow.

“Nothing,” she whispers back, shortly, examining her nails which match her lipstick, and you’re confused, but this isn’t the place to push it.

You wait, and forget about it, and there’s a statue up front that you’ve actually had your eye on for a while.

“Hey Eames, put a bid on that statue for me,” you whisper, and he laughs. 

“You cannot afford to buy that statue.”

“Do you think if I use Mal’s arm to bid on it they’ll make her pay for it?” He laughs, not even trying to be quiet, and you’re almost too busy sniggering to notice when she raises her arm, not even looking up from her phone. “Wait, what are you doing?” you ask frantically, because her buying you shoes and clothes and stealing other people’s jewellery for you was already way too much for you to be able to deal with, and you were not going to have her start to buy you art.

“What?” she asks innocently as her arm goes up again, as she signals at the auctioneer with a wiggle of her fingers, and the other people who were bidding pretty competitively suddenly drop off, because no one’s ever seen her actually bid for something at an auction, everyone who knows anything knows that she’ll do anything to not have to pay for something. He proclaims it hers and you just stare at her, because you don’t even know what to say.

“I really hope you bought that for the gallery because there’s no way I can pay you back.”

“Think of it as a gift for flirting with Melanie for me,” she says, finally meeting your eyes, and she doesn’t look like she did earlier, but there’s some kind of challenge there. 

“I did that because it was for you, I didn’t expect rewarding for it, I didn’t want it.” Your voice is low, urgent, and the room is still achingly quiet, the bang of the gavel and whispers of paper the loudest noises, the auctioneer’s voice ringing through the silent hall.

“Well then think of it as a present, something Melanie can’t give you.” You gape at her in answer to that, as she looks back at her phone, appearing unaffected, and you don’t even know what to say.

“Mal are you jealous?” you ask, eventually, and she just shrugs.

“I have no idea why you would say that.”

“You are,” you grin, lean closer, your whisper getting even quieter. “I stole her wallet for you, so I really don’t think you need to be.”

She raises her eyes from her phone and she’s even closer than she was before, her smile obvious, the cute crease between her brows gone, and you grin in return, what you think of as your charming grin, the one that Mal’s been getting for months now and she didn’t even seem to realise. 

“It’s all for you.” Your voice is low, more serious than it’s ever been, and it’s Mal that kisses you, right there at the back of an auction, her hand sliding beneath your blazer and your hand sliding into her hair, the other one holding onto one of her belt loops like that’ll keep you afloat, like it’ll help you keep your head. You wonder if there’s lipstick on your face as you draw back, and you hope there is, that you’re as flushed and ruffled as you feel like you should be, that everyone can tell just by looking at you that Mal Miles just kissed you and is now looking at you like she wants to kiss you again, but also like she’s the kind of fond that when you first met her you didn’t think she was capable of. You hope that this is to be your place on the team, as lover to Mal and younger sister to Eames and occasional annoyance to Arthur, that you’ll finally get to meet Saito, that one day you’ll get to tell Cobb you stole his wallet. You grin at her and she smiles back, and you feel at home.


End file.
